The Onion Patch

For someone that is not that keen on onions, I’m sure growing a lot of them!  I do use them in cooking a lot, but as more of a hidden vegetable in things like Bolognese or Chili.  It’s not the flavour I don’t like, more the texture!  I could never eat a raw onion slice or bite in to a chunky bit of cooked onion, blech!  The milder spring onions on the other hand I’m quite keen on.

I spent this Sunday afternoon planting out the onion patch in the sunshine, I’ve now got Spring Onions, Shallots, Red Onions and the everyday Pukekohe longkeepers (brown onions) in the ground.  Onion seedlings are good to plant out now in August, and then again in April  (make a start in Feb or Jun if you are going to try from seed).

Onions are meant to have a better chance in life if grown from seed and sown where they are to grow.  I didn’t have much luck with the last lot of onion seeds that I tried so I just bought some seedlings from the garden centre, two for the price of one so was cheap enough that seeds wouldn’t been too much of a saving.  It’s a bit fiddly work separating out the seedlings, I got given some last year and didn’t realise that there was more than one seedling in each little pocket in the seedling tray so had to go and spread out the onions once they had grown a bit and my mistake became apparent.  Wouldn’t recommend that, though they seemed to survive even if they never quite reached their full growth potential.  So yep, I was very carefully pulling apart all these little seedlings … they go in looking like wispy blades of grass.

Doesn't look like much yet, but from little blades of grass will come great things!

You can just use something to poke holes in your prepared ground and slide the seedlings in and then water and gently press around to fill the hole in.  Or you can cheat like me, I used my hand to make a shallow trench in the soil, laid the seedlings against one wall of the trench and then pushed the soil gently to fill the trench in and then gave it a good watering, it saved a bit of fiddling around!  The onions can go in about 5 to 10 cm apart, the spring onions can cuddle up a bit closer , maybe a finger width apart.

Rows and rows of seedlings

The onions will take about 6-8 weeks to grow, depending on varieties/weather etc etc.  You know when they are done as they push above ground and sort of sit on top of the soil so you can start picking them as soon as they look big enough to eat … don’t cover them up again, they are meant to do that.  When the tops start falling over and looking dry pull them all up out of the ground and leave them somewhere to dry for a few days.  They can then be stored in a cool dry place, you can use nets to store or weave the tops together and hang them, French style!  The brown onions will keep a lot longer than the red onions.

The spring onions will take 8-12 weeks which I found a bit weird last year, you think the ‘spring’ onions would be ready before the big onions right?!

Shallots are best planted in the winter months, I’m a bit late with mine, but they can be planted up to the end of September.  These are planted as bulbs in a very similar way to garlic (see here).  I like them as they are a bit milder than onions and don’t have that crunch that weirds me out.  They’ll take about 12-15 weeks and can be dried and stored in a similar way to brown onions, just save a couple of the plumper bulbs and you can keep your crop going for eternity.  I didn’t have quite enough to do this last time and they didn’t grow very big so I’m hoping for better results this year!

You don't have a veggie patch? Apparently onions make great container growers, I'd choose a nice deep trough style of container and make sure it is well draining.  Plant as above and don't let the pots dry out, you might need to give them a bit of a fertiliser boost occasionally too!

Just don't grow them with peas ... they aren't good bed buddies apparently!

I normally give a recipe at the end of veggie blogs … I can’t really this time as I don’t think that a recipe that calls for chopping up the onion in to the smallest pieces humanly possible really does the onion full justice!  I’m sure everyone knows something that they can do with an onion anyway, they are just so versatile.

Well onion seedling photos aren't exactly exciting unless you have that pride in having planted them all, so I'll leave you with some photos of emerging spring instead!

Tulips have appeared out of nowhere

These will grow in to a huge bush of flowers within a month or so and make great companions for the veggie plot